A Democratic Socialist Blog

Koch Brothers 101

The Koch family (￼ /ˈkoʊk/ coke) of industrialists and businessmen is most notable for their control of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States. The family business was started by Fred C. Koch, who developed a new cracking method for the refinement of heavy oil into gasoline. Fred’s four sons became involved in litigation against each other in the 1980s and 1990s. According to the Koch David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch—the two brothers still with Koch Industries—are affiliated with the Koch family foundations. Annual revenues for Koch Industries have been “estimated to be a hundred billion dollars.”
David and Charles have funded conservative and libertarian policy and advocacy groups in the United States. Since the 1980s the Koch foundations have given more than $100 million to such organizations, among these think tanks are the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, as well as more recently Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are Koch-linked organizations that have been linked to the Tea Party movement.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes (Fair Tax: which is Unfair)), minimal social services for the underprivileged, and de regulation industry. Especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of libertarian foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many of The Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
There’s no denying the Koch brothers’ connections to Americans for Prosperity, a tea party group that’s funded by the Kochs’ billions and organizing around the GOP presidential nominations.
The Kochtopus” is what some call Charles and David Koch’s widespread, many-tentacled funding effort to shrink the federal government. Their efforts to suppress voters, dismantle public schools, and get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency and Social Security,
About 150 protesters marched through downtown Wichita on Saturday afternoon as activists from across the country gathered for the weekend Occupy Koch Town rally. Although the block-long line of protesters temporarily blocked several major intersections, the march was peaceful, More research can be found at Koch Brothers Exposed . http://kochbrothersexposed.com

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” Abe Lincoln